


build a ladder to the stars and climb on every rung

by elsaclack



Category: Brooklyn Nine-Nine (TV)
Genre: F/M, Fluff, in the style of cece and schmidt from new girl, just a whooooole lotta fluff, pregnancy reveal
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-04-01
Updated: 2018-04-01
Packaged: 2019-04-16 14:05:46
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,611
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/14166507
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/elsaclack/pseuds/elsaclack
Summary: In truth, when Jake made the decision to answer Charles’ incoming phone call an hour earlier, he hand’t really expected much. Maybe a live update of something cute Nikolaj was doing, maybe commentary on whatever inedible animal part he was forcing himself to eat at the time, maybe anotherCats-related pun. He expected somethingordinary.au where jake and amy find out they're expecting the same way cece and schmidt do on new girl





	build a ladder to the stars and climb on every rung

**Author's Note:**

> it's me, ya girl, hopping on the pregnancy reveal bandwagon,

In truth, when Jake made the decision to answer Charles’ incoming phone call an hour earlier, he hand’t really expected much. Maybe a live update of something cute Nikolaj was doing, maybe commentary on whatever inedible animal part he was forcing himself to eat at the time, maybe another  _Cats_ -related pun. He expected something  _ordinary_.

(Ordinary by Charles standards, at least.)

Which is to say, he hadn’t expected his knees to go weak, or the blood to drain from his face, or an inescapable tidal wave of pure  _joy_ to flood each microscopic facet of his existence. He hadn’t expected the sky to open up, or the angels to sing, or for the whole entire world as he knows it to completely shift on its axis.

He hadn’t expected to find himself in the midst of his apartment-turned-veritable-flower shop because no single bouquet is adequate enough to express the sheer maelstrom of emotions quaking and seizing in his gut.

Amy’s on her way home now - that’s what her last text announced twenty minutes ago - and Jake’s breathless and antsy with the anticipation. The thick plastic wrapped around the two bouquets he’s holding feels stiff and crinkles loudly with each minute movement in the muscles of his hands, and his heart is beating so fast he’s starting to feel a bit faint, but he can’t quite hide the dumbfoundedness he knows is making his face go all dopey and soft. Even now, when it feels like he’s about to blast off through the ceiling right into the apartment above theirs.

How can he, knowing that nine months from this moment he’s going to be a  _papa_?

He knows it’s exceedingly rare for anyone other than the mother to find out about the pregnancy first, but thanks to Gina’s nosiness and Genevieve’s general lack of comprehension when it comes to basic human boundaries, Amy’s weeks-old pregnancy is now common knowledge to everyone but Amy. It seems the entire precinct knows - both that Amy’s pregnant, and that she somehow doesn’t know about it yet.

She doesn’t know that she’s pregnant. That she’s going to have a baby. That right this second, her body is hard at work creating a whole new person. A person who he hopes will have her smarts, her determination and will to succeed, her soft and pretty hair and her megawatt smile -

There’s a key sliding into the lock on the front door.

Heart in his throat, fingers trembling where they curl around the flower stems, he bounces on the balls of his feet to burn through the sudden rush of adrenaline flooding his veins. It seems to take her an eternity to get the front door unlocked; he’s on the verge of screaming just to make room between his ribs for all the anticipation and excitement. He very nearly blurts it when he hears the door swing open, but he manages to keep his lips clamped shut before he ruins the surprise. “Hey, babe, I’m home,” she calls as she edges inside - her back to him. She hasn’t seen him or the flowers yet. She’s got a box in her hands and she’s hefting it toward a side table where their keybowl lives alongside a decorative candle, and she hasn’t seen him or the flowers yet. She gets the box hauled up to the table and makes a sound, like she’s winded, like she’s exerted a significant amount of effort in carrying that box all the way here from where she parked out on the street, and though there’s a warning light flashing like mad at the thought of his  _pregnant wife who is pregnant_  lifting heavy things, he can’t quite choke the words out. Because she still hasn’t seen him or the flowers yet and she  _still doesn’t know she’s pregnant_.

She turns a split-second before he topples over the edge of losing his mind, and as a purely bewildered expression flickers to life in her eyes, he nearly buries his face in the flowers to muffle a high-pitched giggle.

“What’s, uh…” she trails, gaze darting over the forest of flowers covering nearly every square inch of elevated flat surfaces in their living room, before landing on his face, framed between the two unvased bouquets in danger of slipping from his numb fingers. The bewilderment is still very much present but it’s tinged now with amusement, and his heart is  _soaring_ because she’s his wife and he loves her more than anything and she knows he’s up to something but she has no idea,  _no idea_  that he’s about to change her entire life. “What’s happening?”

He knows his whole face is in danger of splitting clean in half from how broad and, frankly,  _painful_ his grin is, and when he tries to speak he has to really concentrate on forming words and not just throwing the flowers to the ground to sweep her up in a ( _gentle_ ) bear hug right then and there. “I - I’m pregnant,” he hears himself say.

“What?” she laughs, bewilderment and amusement seeming to intensify, and she’s the most beautiful human being he’s ever seen in his life.

“I mean -  _you’re_ pregnant.  _We’re_ pregnant.”

Her face falls slack with shock - and something else he just doesn’t have the wherewithal to decipher in that moment - at once.

“Your doctor called you,” he explains as he lowers the flowers to the dining room table between them, watching emotions flash through her eyes faster than the speed of light, “and Gina picked up. And then she called again and Charles picked up, and Charles told me. There was a lot going on.” He steps closer, watching the way her eyes glass over and her entire torso begins to shake with the same tsunami of pure joy still thrumming in the space around his heart. “But - we’re having a baby, Ames.”

Her hands are shaking when they rise to cover the truly  _blinding_ grin that has begun to blossom across her face, and the tears are spilling freely down her cheeks, and she’s  _glowing_. So he keeps his slow approach going steadily, and she turns with him as he moves around the table, neither of them able or willing to tear their respective gazes from the other’s face.

“I wanted to - to get you flowers,” he gestures to his left, her right, but her eyes don’t follow the move, “but I couldn’t just pick one. I mean - this is - and I’m so -”

She lowers her hands once he’s within arm’s reach, and he holds his breath. “We’re having a baby?” she breathes, like she can’t believe it, like he’s given her the whole world all at once in the palm of his hand.

(And in a way, he has, he supposes - at this point in development he’s pretty sure their child could easily fit in the palm of Amy’s hand.)

“We’re having a baby,” he confirms softly, and her tears are renewed. She reaches for his hands and he goes to her willingly, letting her pull him in until their foreheads are touching and their huffing breaths made uneven with joyful laughter mingle in the space between their chests. He pulls one hand from her grasp to anchor the back of her neck when he briefly tilts his head up to kiss her forehead, but otherwise remains still with her, content to live in this bubble for as long as the world around them will allow.

“I can’t believe it’s really happening,” she whispers, and oh,  _oh_ , his heart is flipping inside his chest. Just a few short years ago he lived every day of his life longing,  _aching_ for the woman who worked just a few feet away, and now she’s a sergeant and his  _wife_ and the future  _mother of his child_  -

“I know,” he all but chokes, the emotions rising to new and impossible heights inside his chest to constrict his throat.

She pulls away first and when his eyes flutter open, she’s looking up at him, ablaze with wonder, with jubilation, with unheeded and untethered love leveled directly at him. “We’re having a baby,” she murmurs, and he’s crying again, the way he did on the manic drive from the precinct to the florist upon hanging up with Charles. There are a thousand things he wants to do - not the least of which is to literally jump up and down and  _squeal_ \- but right now, in this moment, it feels like the most natural thing in the world to lean forward and kiss her.

It’s delicate and chaste, but he feels it all the way down in his toes. Frenetic energy still prickles beneath his skin but he reaches up to cup her face gently, smoothly, thumbs brushing over the wetness on her cheeks before he slowly pulls away.

“I love you so much,” Amy whispers, her breath on his lips, and with his eyes still closed it’s so easy to travel back to their wedding a year earlier when this exact moment first happened beneath the arch. She’d whispered the same thing then, for only him to hear over the sounds of celebration from their audience; his heart did the same triple backflip then as it does here and now.

“I love you so much, too,” he murmurs back, before melting into her once again.

She pulls away abruptly just a short moment later, and a new kind of fire is burning in her eyes. “We have  _so much planning to do_!”

(The Baby Binder winds up being even thicker and more intimidating than the Wedding Binder; years later, it winds up being their daughter’s favorite bedtime story on the shelf.)


End file.
